cmartenson's Blog

Note:  This is part of a series on personal preparation to help you answer the question, "What should I do?"  Awhile back, we polled our most frequent visitors to the site and asked what improvements would be most helpful to our readers.  The strongest response was that we should make it easier for people to start preparing.

So we've decided to do exactly that.  This series on how to build personal resilience into your life is designed for people who are just beginning the process.  Those who have already taken these basic steps (and more) are invited to help us improve what is offered here by contributing comments, as this content is meant to be dynamic and improve over time.  Our goal is to provide a safe, rational, relatively comfortable experience for those who are just coming to the realization that it would be prudent to take precautionary steps against an uncertain future.  read more »

Note:  This is the first of a series on personal preparation to help you address the question, "What should I do?"

The copy in this series comes from a book chapter I wrote for The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises (Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch, eds.) 

It is being reproduced here with permission.  For other book excerpts, permission to reprint, and purchasing, please visit http://www.postcarbonreader.com.

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A new Martenson Report is ready for enrolled members.

Link - Growth and the Upcoming Iranian War

Executive Summary

• A war with Iran seems likely before the US elections in November.
• The US has committed an act of war in deciding to embargo Iranian fuel shipments and international financial activities.
• The "urgency for dealing with Iran" is driven more by oil competition than military crisis.
• The US militarily occupies or diplomatically controls every strategically-located oil producer in the Middle East except for Iran.
• The most probable explanation for the sudden concern about Iran is likely centered over energy and the 'requirement' of growth that our economic and financial systems demand.
• Seeking militarily-secured access to oil halfway around the world is a weak strategy.
• An Iranian war has the potential to severely disrupt developed economies due to another wild oil-price spike.

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Within the next 20 years, the most profound changes in economic history will sweep the globe. The economic chaos and turbulence that we are now experiencing are merely the opening salvos in what will prove to be a long, disruptive period of adjustment.

At least that's my theory, and careful investors owe it to themselves to hear me out. If I'm right, long-term investing in stocks and bonds will deliver lackluster returns at best and be destroyers of wealth at worst.

I'm going to repost this article for any newcomers and any old-timers because it is worth reviewing from time to time.  It's the center of my thesis about how the world works and what's likely to come.

Once you've read this, if you have not done so it's time to either watch the 45 minute 'short version' of the Crash Course, or begin the Crash Course itself.

And if you happen to be brand new to the site and are wondering what it has to offer and how to navigate it, I would invite you to visit our Welcome Page.

Now, onto the article.....

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The End is Near, Inc.

This is the title of the recent full-spread article in Boston Magazine about me, my work, and our community. It’s due out in hard print on Sunday with the Boston Globe. It is already available online here.

Unfortunately, the article relies too much on sensationalistic stereotypes and includes some troubling distortions.  My chief concern is that the story, told through a very few limited, out-of-context, and edited quotes, paints a picture of Becca and me as doomsayers with a bunker mentality.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

We somewhat reluctantly agreed to have our whole family included in this very public article, opened our home for several days for the effort, and are now wrestling with the impacts that will stem from the fact that our best efforts have now been tagged as “The End is Near, Inc.” - an unfortunate mischaracterization that completely misses what we are really about while implying that we do this for the money. 

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Academy of Music, Northampton, MA, Thursday, July 8, at 7:00 pm    Event Link

I’ve traveled widely this year, and I am greatly looking forward to bringing a well-honed message to a live audience at a really nice venue right here in my own backyard.  On Thursday, July 8th, I’ll be presenting a condensed version of the Crash Course, updated for recent events, followed by an ample audience Q&A segment.  Want to hear my views on where the economy is headed?  Then come to this talk and ask away.

Opportunities like this represent one of the very best low-cost opportunities that I can offer to bring together like-minded folks under one roof, allow you get to know each other face-to-face, and foster the kind of mutual understanding and regionally-relevant dialogue that is critically important right now.

This talk inevitably raises the question, "Okay, so what do we do?"  read more »

A new Martenson Report is ready for enrolled members.

Link - Second Leg of the Housing Decline Set To Begin

Executive Summary

• Housing data is weak and just took a turn for the worse
• Stimulus efforts were essential to keep housing propped up
• The stimulus has ended
• QE and stock market prices are correlated
• What’s coming next
• What you should do

We bought our house in November of 2009.  This will turn out to have been a very bad financial decision.  We’ll be underwater on that purchase for a very long time; maybe forever (or until Bernanke’s great experiment takes the final turn towards massive currency destruction and inflation; whichever comes first).     read more »

The G20 meeting has revealed two important things that tell us something about our combined economic future.  First we learned that the US lost the battle to try to get everyone back on the Keynesian print-a-thon bandwagon.  This tells us something about US leadership in these troubled times.  Once upon a time, the US could dictate such things, but those days are apparently over (which deserves to be noted.)

I have good news to report and another video version of the short version of my talk for you to watch and hopefully use.  Of course, we've been honing and crafting "the talk" over the past few months (years, actually), trying to make it more accessible, cleaner, and shorter.  I think we've got it pretty close to right.

A recent talk given at the Yahoo! headquarters in CA in June was recorded (along with the entire Q&A afterwards), was made available to us, and has just been uploaded, in six parts, to our Youtube.com channel by the team here at Martenson Central.

Here's the first part; the other five are below (note that the actual introduction starts at 1:14 in the first clip):

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